


Common Ground

by Windian



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, F/F, Tales of Femslash Week 2017, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 21:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11518200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windian/pseuds/Windian
Summary: "The girl crouched on the mountaintop's name is Edna, and you think you've never heard a name so succinct. In your long life you've picked up a healthy knowledge of many things, including ednae-- wild flowers able to weather the hardiest, driest of conditions. When a wind rolls in from the Spiritcrest, it's what you think of: that dainty and delicate flower growing straight from the face of the rock: Edna."For hundreds of years, Lailah visits Edna on the mountain.





	Common Ground

**Author's Note:**

> This story references a few things from Berseria. I've done my best to keep things vague enough not to be spoilery, but since a portion of this fic focuses on Lailah and Maotelus if you'd prefer to know /nothing/ this story might be better skipped until later. 
> 
> Lailah being a reincarnation of a certain person is pure headcanon on my part, since it's never confirmed in either of the games.
> 
> This story was written for the day: 1- flowers prompt for Tales of Femslash Week. [Check it out and come take part!](http://talesfemslashweek.tumblr.com/)

The girl crouched on the mountaintop's name is Edna, and you think you've never heard a name so succinct. In your long life you've picked up a healthy knowledge of many things, including ednae-- wild flowers able to weather the hardiest, driest of conditions. When a wind rolls in from the Spiritcrest, it's what you think of: that dainty and delicate flower growing straight from the face of the rock: Edna.

The young looking frame she projects doesn’t match her scathing tongue, nor her astute, oft world-weary eyes. You're not fooled; you'd wager she's actually probably been knocking around this life for longer than you have.

“Why not come down from the mountain, Edna?” you ask her, the first time you meet.

She fixes you quite evenly in the eye. “Why? So I can join in the Lady of the Lake's crusade? Help the poor wibble humans out? Not interested.”

Flustered both by the fact that she knows of you, and her harsh reply, you find yourself speaking quickly: “Not at all-- I was just thinking that, surely, it must be lonely up here by yourself.”

The quirk of smile. You puzzle yourself over it: you can't figure this girl out. She replies, “Yeah, I guess it kind of is.”

“Then why--”

“I'm waiting for someone. My brother, Eizen. He told me to stay put, and he'd be back. So I'm waiting.” She sighs a small, put-upon sigh. “If I left and he came back, he'd just freak out. It's a pain.”

“I see,” you say, and that's that.

So you think at first, anyway.

 

Edna is still on your mind as you sit propped up by Maotelus's side in the Throne, scratching under the hard-to-reach scales on his neck in just the way he likes.

“Did you know there's a seraph living on the mountain?” you ask him.

He rumbles pleasantly in reply, and it almost kind of reminds you of a kind of _purr_. “Ah, Edna. How is she?”

It doesn’t surprise you that the dragon knows of Edna. Maotelus has a knack of knowing people. When you yourself had stepped of the sacred flames for the first time, you'd met Maotelus at the bottom of the steps as though he'd been waiting for you. It had felt less like a first meeting, and more as if he was welcoming you home.

“She told me she was waiting for her brother. Eizen? It sounded like she's been waiting a long time.”

The rumbling stops. It tells you what you need to know.

“Maybe you'd like to visit her again, Lailah?” Maotelus asks.

“I'd like that,” you say, and then: “Turn over? I can do the other side, if you'd like.”

As he settles into a new position, and you can feel the Empyrean positively _purring_ beneath you, Maotelus mentions casually: “She likes palmiers, you know.”

 

Edna looks bored out of her mind when you find her, sprawled across the mountaintop, parasol propped over her for shade. For a moment, you think you see a spark of interest in her eyes, but her voice is dry as dust as she intones, “Oh. You again.”

It doesn’t deter you in the slightest. Chipperly you set the paper bag down beside her. “I brought you something,” you tell her.

As hard as Edna feigns disinterest, she is unable to stifle down her curiosity. _Tch_ , she says, before dragging the bag towards her. An odd expression crosses her face when she picks up one of the pastries.

“ _Palmiers_?” she says.

“A friend told me you like them.”

You sit down on the rock beside her, spreading out your dress so it doesn’t crumple.

“Good to see the stereotype about fire seraphs and baking is true.”

“Oh Edna, it sounds like you're trying to get a _rise_ out of me.”

She squints at you. “You said that weirdly. Was that supposed to be a joke?”

“I have more, if that one didn't _dough_ it for you. Listen: what did the yeast say to the bag of flour?”

“Please stop.”

“Come on, we _knead_ to be serious!”

You don't know why Edna makes such a disgusted noise: that was one of your best ones. But although Edna tries to keep a straight face, you can see her mouth waver with something like mirth.

You've seen a lot in your two hundred years, not all of it good. You figure, the world could always use a little more laughter.

Edna places the palmier back in the bag. Her voice is accusatory: “Listen. If you're visiting me out of pity--”

“Never!” you say. One hand against your heart, you place the other on her hand. “I wanted to get to know you better, Edna.”

She looks at for several moments. “You're weird,” she says.

You beam at her. She doesn't pull her hand away, at least, and that's a start.

 

The malevolence in the world is like water: ebbing and flowing. Sometimes, it surges up, and you must take up your mantle once more. You're not Lailah then, but the Lady of the Lake: Maotelus's prime lord, the sacred blade incarnate. Years pass, sometimes, without seeing Edna, but always she greets you back as though you've hardly left. “Oh? _You're_ back?” she'll say. The flower on the mountainside is utterly uninterested in malevolence and hellions and most of all, humans: the absurd creatures who have stolen her brother away. Though your feelings about Eizen are complicated, you have to admit he had chosen a safe spot to cache away a beloved sister. Spiritcrest is unmoving, unchanging, unwarped by the tide of malevolence. A little too safe, because, likewise, so is Edna, who doesn't grow an inch through the centuries you visit her.

Edna doesn’t move from her mountaintop, so her brother can find her. Likewise, she doesn’t grow up, so that when Eizen returns, she can still be his little sister.

Sometimes, you want to shake her by the shoulders. Kiss on on the forehead. Take her hands and tell her, “It's okay! Grow up! You don't need his permission. Grow up!”

Instead you ask her once again: will she come down from the mountain? And once again, Edna turns you down.

“Can't do that. I mean, if I'm really such incredible company, you could stay here, I guess.” The offer is flippant.

You reply with a laugh, and Edna tells you to run off home to your humans, and it's only when you're half way to Ladylake you wonder if the offer was sincere.

But you don't hesitate. You're Maotelus's blade; you're the sacred flame. As a seraph, you're still young; there's still so much of this world you need to see.

 

When the rain comes, you and Edna sit in the shaded alcove of the shrine, eating palmiers and watching the rain deluge down in torrential washes. Edna swings her legs rhythmically. When it clears, you watch a rainbow arch from one side of the sky to the other. The sun makes the rain-washed rock sparkle like diamonds. You never notice these things, back when you're down on the ground. Only when you're up high on the mountain do you take time to sit, to see.

“Oh, Edna. Isn't it gorgeous?”

“It's okay, I guess,” says Edna, and she frowns, struggling to voice something. “It looks prettier with you here, somehow.” As she speaks, she winds her fingers between yours, silently imparting a question.

You squeeze back, an almost apologetic squeeze. Because just as Edna can't come down from the mountain, you can't sever yourself from your roots down on the earth.

Some ties are just too binding.

 

Some nights, talking long into the evening, Maotelus falls asleep under your touch. Sometimes, tail twitching in his sleep, he calls you by another name. An echo from a past life, it casts a cold dread over you, as cool and startling as though someone has cracked an egg over your head.

Maotelus never uses your other name when you're awake, and for that you're grateful. You have no memories of your past life aside from cold whispers of deja vu. When you'd first stepped into this life from the fire and had seen the silver dragon waiting for you, tears had spilled down your cheeks. Unstoppable, they'd cascaded down. “I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm crying,” you'd said. With a clumsy rasp of his claw, the dragon had brushed them away. Funny how even then, you hadn't been afraid. _It's okay,_ he'd told you.

Whoever you were before, that person is gone. Yet traces of her linger in you, like the scent of ash in the wind long after the fire is extinguished.

 

When you catch word of a dragon on the Spiritcrest, it feels as though your insides have turned to ice. You hurry, fast as you can to the mountain, but it still doesn’t feel quick enough. Your trembling limbs betray you; you trip and stumble.

“Edna!” you call, the mountain wind stealing and hurling your words away. “Edna!”

Edna is curled up into a ball, tucked into the alcove of the mountain-trail shrine. Relief rises in your throat in a sob: “Edna!” you cry, half-wail. “Edna, thank God!”

You throw your arms around her. Face pressed into the lacy gauze of her dress, she does not look up. She doesn’t reply: _Who are you talking to? We're the gods here, dummy._

Instead, she sobs: soft pathetic hiccupy things, hiding her face from you in her dress. Gently, with love, you ease her out of her ball, cupping her face between your hands-- red and splotchy from tears. Her eyes dart about, focusing on anywhere but yourself.

“Edna... what happened? I heard something about a dragon. Did it attack you?”

Vehemently, she shakes her head, the first time she's responded to you.

“Then--”

“It's Eizen,” she says, her voice tight and hoarse. “Eizen. The dragon, it's my brother.”

“Oh. Oh no. Edna-”

“I always wanted him to come home, but-- but not like this.” Her voice cracks, no longer able to hold the tears at bay. She buries her face in your breast, and it's all you can do to hold her. She clings to you like a ship-wrecked sailor and it's all you can do to be stone: to be something for her to hold onto as she weathers the storm. She pummels her hand against you in short, useless, strokes. “Eizen, you idiot. You damned idiot. I hate you-- I hate you--” she says.

Eventually, she tires herself out. You call her back from her grief, parting her sweaty hair, stroking fingers along tear stained cheeks.

You speak gently: “Edna, we must leave this place now. It's no longer safe here.”

She shakes her head. Even now, her jaw set a in a stubborn line. “I can't leave him.”

“I understand how you feel, but there's nothing you can do--”

“Even so,” she says. “ _Even so. I--_ I can't.” She grips yours hands tight. Too tightly. “Lailah, will you stay with me? I can't...” she shivers, at the thought of a night alone with a dragon as a brother. “Just for tonight,” she says, and you think it's the first time Edna has ever _asked_ anything of you.

When Eizen roars from atop the peak, the whole mountainside trembles.

Edna trembles too, and when you move to bring her into an embrace, she pushes up on your thighs. Your first kiss is desperate, clinging. When Edna pulls away, your lips tingle with the softness of her lips and the sharpness of salt.

You stay.

You make yourself as comfortable as you can in the alcove, Edna curled in your arms. You don't sleep: you listen instead for the dragon. You'd thought once about tracking Eizen down, about telling the seraph how selfish he was being. “Come back to Edna, or free her," you'd demand. Why hadn't you?

Dragons, like seraphs, have no limit of life. Now, Eizen has his wish: his little sister by his side, for all eternity.

 

You try, one more time, to convince Edna to come down from the mountain. Before you can even finish the question, you know her answer. Just as she knows yours.

Edna doesn't cling to you. She doesn’t even meet your eye. You have, after all, already rejected her. When she'd kissed you in the shrine, her desperate mouth and her clinging fingers had asked one thing: stay with me. Please, stay.

But you can't.

“See you, I guess,” she says lethargically, and while you spent the night curled together tight as voles there's a space that's opened up between you.

“Please look after yourself Edna. If you change your mind, let me know.” You hate the polite voice you use, the emptiness of the words.

“Sure, sure. If you need me, you know where to find me.” There's a lilt of a joke in her voice, but it's crushed out by the sorrow in her eyes. She looks so slight, standing there on the mountainside, like the slightest breeze could blow her away.

So you go back to your humans, and Edna returns to her brother. And you tell yourself you don't regret it, although the truth is, you're not so sure.

 

You fall in love.

If Edna is earth, then Michael is fire. He's bright and alive and he never stops: he's fascinated about history, about the seraphim, about his fellow humans. You've been warned about loving humans: that their fire though bright, quickly burns out. Despite that, you're drawn to him. You're caught by his vision: for friendship between humans and seraphim like in the eras of old; about Camlann.

Loving Michael is easier than thinking of Edna, who still, even now, sticks between your teeth. Years since you last visited her but still her name lingers on your lips. The mountain, and Edna's sorrow, cast a shadow. It's easier to put off a visit to the Spiritcrest. Michael needs you here, after all.

Camlann is well into construction when the guilt becomes too much.

“Well, look what the katz dragged in,” says Edna, and you jump-- does Edna know?

But then, you tell yourself, it's not like you and Edna had anything like that-- not _really_ \--

You realise: it's been over a decade since you last saw her.

The visit doesn’t go well. You don't tell Edna the nature of your relationship with Michael, but perhaps she discerns it: maybe she sees the way your eyes light up when you speak of him, the way they'd once done with another. There's a sour twist to her mouth even the sweetness of palmiers can't turn, and when you ask her to come to Camlann with you, you can't help but secretly be relieved when she turns you down.

There's a certain finality to your goodbye. A bitter after-taste lingers in mouth for days afterwards, like the ashy tang of a bonfire that's been smouldering too long.

 

Camlann burns.

Michael severs the connection between you. You feel it when it happens: the feeling like the tip of a knife grazing your throat as something vital is cut away from you. You gasp aloud. It's nothing compared to the huge surge of malevolence that sweeps through the land. Massive, unimaginable malevolence that leaves you weak and trembling. The kind of malevolence that could only come from a a newly-born Lord of Calamity.

By the time you've reached the Throne, it's already too late.

“No-- no-- _no_ \---”

Michael is dead, the knife still warm in his hand. You stifle a retch when you realise that in his arms is his baby nephew, as lifeless as his uncle.

Maotelus's shining silver scales are now stained a putrescent black. When you reach for him, he lets loose a roar, for he is now a beast both in mind and body.

You have no choice but to flee, before the malevolence overtakes you too, all the while fighting off the deja vu-- because this-- _you've seen this before._

Somehow, without willing them, your legs take you to the Spiritcrest.

Edna greets you coldly, until she notices your trembling: she rushes forward to steady you, just as your legs give out.

“Lailah, what have you done-- this is--- this is malevolence!”

Things are hazy, after that. You sleep for several days-- perhaps longer. You dream a wild tangle of dreams-- about a man you call _master_. Sit. Stay. Good girl. Yes, Master, I obey. The man wears the cloak of the Shepherd-- Michael's cloak. Guilt bleeds into your dreams-- because surely it must have been your fault Michael did what he did, _you_ who pushed him so. You overburdened him, pushed him too far.

Because the other possibility is unthinkable: that Michael was, from the beginning, the kind of man to murder his nephew, and doom the world into chaos.

You struggle to reach back to consciousness. A heavy weight seems to hold you under. But eventually, you begin to feel something, other than your despair: a cool cloth on your brow, a warm hand against your head.

Edna.

Flowers blooming on a dead mountain.

The name sparks a flint against your heart. Flaky palmiers in a mountain shrine, watching the sun reflect back against the wet earth like light on the ocean. You rise against the heavy shackles of sorrow, and breach the surface.

You almost expect Edna to greet you with a back-biting comment. _Oh, you're finally awake are you, sleeping beauty?_

But instead, Edna's face splits in relief. She looks tired. There's bags under her eyes and her hair is tied back messily, but when she smiles you don't think you've ever seen her look so lovely.

“I've missed you, Edna,” you blurt, and it's worth it to see the surprise and indignation and something inexplicably _pleased_ battle for supremacy on her face.

Finally, she sighs, and gives it up. “You too. Especially as _you._ I've already got my hands full with one dragon on this mountain, did you really think I need another one?”

“My apologies.”

Edna helps you up into a sitting position, and the weight of everything starts to press down on your shoulders again. You should, you suppose, explain what's happened.

Edna interrupts you.

“This world apocalypse stuff can wait a while. I bet you must be hungry.”

In response, your stomach rumbles. “Ravenous,” you say.

 

You spend weeks on the mountainside with Edna. By day, you even manage to laugh a little, but when the evening falls your despair returns. Even the stars seem to stare down accusingly. You sieve through the events endlessly, trying to figure it out: just what had gone wrong?

“You know, the whole brooding and self-castigation over all the terrible stuff in the world thing doesn’t really work. Trust me, I've tried.”

Edna puts herself down daintily on the rock next to you.

You squeeze out a smile. “You, Edna?”

She turns to face you. Tells you, quite sternly, “It's not your responsibility to save the entire world, Lailah.”

“If you say so, Edna.”

She rolls her eyes in exasperation. Probably, she's known you long enough to realise when you're not actually listening to her.

“I told you, didn't I? Humans ruin everything. It was stupid to get involved with them in the first place.”

“Maybe so,” you agree.

“'Maybe so' you say, but you're still going to run off to them the first chance you get, aren't you?”

You'd taken all of this for Edna's usual brand of scathing banter-- practically the girl's way of being friendly-- but you notice now the tension in Edna's body. Her jaw is tight, something in her tightly wound. She crosses her arms against herself, her cheeks splotched with anger.

You've known Edna for hundreds of years. Dozens of lifetimes. And yet, you still can't move past this impasse.

“I'm sorry, Edna,” you say, bowing your head. “I know you're right. No matter how hard any of us try, malevolence can never truly be cleansed from this world... but even though it may be foolish, I still want to try. Even if I can help just a little bit, I can't help but think it'll be worth it.”

Edna makes a disgusted noise. “Idiot.”

But then, she starts to unfold from herself. “But I guess I'm an idiot too. Even now, I can't leave my brother. I know there's nothing I can do for him, and yet still, I...”

Edna looks up at the stars. The moonlight casts a soft, surprisingly vulnerable glow to her.

Despite your impasse, and despite the fact the two of you may never find common ground: despite all of that, you take Edna's hand.

She starts, and then slowly settles into you, easing her shoulder against yours.

“I guess we're well suited for one another, then,” you tell her, raising a cheer to your voice.

“Two idiots together. How wonderful,” says Edna. But despite her deeply dry voice, she turns her face into your shoulder in what you're sure is a _nuzzle_.

As hard as she tries to act surly, Edna is never anything but adorable.

“This is the part where you say you say you're leaving, right?” Edna says, words muffled into your shoulder.

You hadn't wanted to do this now. “Yes. I have no choice. I'll go to Ladylake, and wait for the new Shepherd.”

Edna jabs you. “Everyone has a choice, idiot.”

She's right. There have been times when you wondered: was it because of your past life that you fought so hard, so fiercely for mortal creatures? Fate? Destiny?

In the end however, you put those thoughts aside. Whoever you were before, whoever Maotelus speaks to when he dreams, you're _you_. So you tell Edna, “I _want_ to do this.”

You'll have to cast an oath-- a powerful one. Maotelus's power, which had once ran through you like fire is now no more than a smoulder. To reignite it, there will be things you'll have to give up.

“You might wait years, you know,” says Edna.

“Even so,” you say.

“Well,” she admits, “I guess I could teach you a few things about waiting.”

Edna smiles, a funny little lopsided kind of smile. You take up her hand and kiss it, just to watch her ears colour red.

“It might be a long while, but we'll meet again. I vow it.”

“Alright, alright. You'll make me gag with all this wishy washy stuff.” Despite what she says, Edna smiles. And despite that, she doesn't let go of your hand.

You'll meet once more. But till then, you'll sleep. Until someone strong enough to bear the Shepherd's mantle appears, and hope returns once again to the earth.

 

 


End file.
